Amendments that don’t make the earth move

Texans often yawn when they’re asked to vote on changes to their state constitution.

Those elections come around every couple of years, after each legislative session. And some of the proposals are awfully limited in scope.

Safe to say, for example, that few North Texans were inspired to vote on the 2013 proposition repealing authorization for a hospital district in Hidalgo County.

Statewide turnout in that election, which also included seven other propositions, was just 8.6 percent of registered voters. Turnout in the 2014 general election, with a race for governor and many other offices on the ballot, was 33.7 percent of registered voters.

Proposition 5

This year’s most obscure amendment would authorize 20 Texas counties with populations between 5,000 and 7,500 to build and maintain private roads for a reasonable charge.

Counties with populations of 5,000 or less have been allowed to work on private roads since 1980. This amendment is an update, the argument being that small rural counties rarely have private contractors for this kind of work.